The starting signal for hauling the fish is a jam. Who is jamming badly, drops out in the run. These are the rules of the game.
The first and at the same time the most important moment of hauling a fish is its skillful hook. When the hook is firmly inserted into the mouth of a fish, only the breaking of the line can determine the unsuccessful haul. In the event of a bad jam, the fish will come off the hook sooner or later and there is nothing you can do about it, even the greatest fishing craftsmanship. Thus, for success in hauling the fish, the jam must be done perfectly. But why do we so often have empty jams??
It all depends on the angler and his gear. For example, consider fishing with spinning. Our rods are getting lighter, reels getting smaller and smaller, the lines are getting thinner – only hooks, arming the bait remained unchanged. Anchors, once very good, they are too big and too massive today, so that they can be effectively hammered into the fish lip with such light equipment, I guess, that the strength of the hook is adequate to the size of the fish. Fish with a hard mouth, like pike or zander, require a strong jam. Multiple jams are necessary here, repeated in short intervals. Vice versa: fish aiming soft, delicate snout (np. perch), they must not be severely jammed, nor brutally towed. Forcing towing will only tear the fish's mouth open here, freeing the hook or grappling hook and the irretrievable loss of our prey.
Hook finesse
Strongly hooked fish is not the only factor that guarantees success. A successful catch will sooner be influenced by some modifications to our artificial bait. So let's replace the massive hooks with larger wobblers or spinners and give up the excessive amount of them.. The fewer hooks on the bait, the easier it is to transfer the force of the jam onto the fish, So for wobblers with three hooks, the middle hook is always subtracted, and for spinners with two upper hooks. In Poland, it is permissible to equip an artificial bait with a maximum of two trebles. As a rule, when hooking with treble hooks more force is required than when using single hooks, although here, too, a stronger jam is sometimes necessary, especially when fishing over long distances, where the line "absorbs" a lot of the energy of our hook. I am thinking here mainly of sea sweat at great depths with pilkers and fishing from the sea coast, where the distances 100 m are not particularly distant. Has anyone seen any angler before?, which simultaneously jammed and ran towards the beach, winding the line?
It is not human, who has lost his mind, on the contrary – an expert angler. An equally important role is played by the jam when towing artificial bait behind the boat. Lure hauling behind the boat in Poland is prohibited. In summer, the speed of the boat alone is sufficient to hook the fish. In the cooler months, the activity of the fish is lower, so bait retrieval must be slower as well. In this case, it becomes necessary to "manual jam". Our reaction must be quick and decisive, and the jam the stronger the farther the bait is from the boat. It is especially difficult to jam large specimens. Smaller individuals easily succumb to the thrust of the boat, on the other hand, the larger pieces put up a tough resistance and do not allow you to move. In this case, there is a high probability of breaking the fish.
Unsuccessful jam
Angler distraction or catching a large fish unexpectedly often breaks the line. The first reason is unforgivable, the second is already more understandable, even more so when, after a whole day of fishing, we got used to hooking smaller fish.
Such cases occur especially when fishing with a fly, where, after many hours of jamming smaller trout, we are not prepared for aggressive and strong beating. The hook of a larger individual turns out to be too strong and the leader breaks. To avoid this, you should always reckon with taking "soooo fish", because that's what we're on the water for.
